We Chat With Anonymous Africa After They DDoS'd A Couple Of Websites To Make A Point Against Racism And Corruption

A group linked to the hacktivist collective Anonymous claims to have taken down the websites of media outlets and political parties in South Africa earlier this week.

The collective‚ dubbed Anonymous Africa, claimed to have taken down the website of South African public broadcaster SABC, whose websites were offline for hours. The whole thing started with a simple poll, asking if the SABC deserved Anonymous Africa's attention, which received an overwhelming yes.

This isn't the first time that a group linked to Anonymous has targeted South Africa. Earlier in the year, World Hacker Team, another group linked to Anonymous, reported that it had hacked the SA Department of Water Affairs website. The attack and subsequent leak of sensitive data online was part of Operation Africa (#OpAfrica), an attack by Anonymous on "corporations and governments that enable and perpetuate corruption on the African continent".

The websites of The New Age newspaper and news channel ANN7, as well as those of Sahara and Oakbay Investments were also taken offline this week. All these entities are linked to the wealthy Gupta family, whose controversial close relationship with South African president Jacob Zuma has drawn plenty of criticism.

We are going to send a message to the Guptas that almost every single South African has wanted to do since they corrupted the government.

While online attacks may have some impact, it seems your impact is limited to the websites of the agencies and parties you're targeting. What other strategies are you looking to employ going forward?

Anonymous Africa: We are a protest group, we know of other groups that have invited us to intrude on other networks but we prefer just doing flash mob style protests at the door of the property. We wish the other groups the best of luck, but our protests are not to cause permanent damage.

The hit-and-run tactics that Anonymous Africa have deployed certainly caught the attention of the authorities, given the high profile of the websites that were taken down. They have exposed the cracks that exist that allow these attacks to happen, and as a result, they have brought the crucial issue of cyber-security and cyber-activism to the fore. The fact that they can be used to make a point like this raises questions over the level of security on other websites.

This time, the attackers were more interested in making a statement, posting a log of their activities and leaving the data behind these websites intact. Next time, the targets may not be so lucky.

We will stop the attacks at SABC (for now) at 4pm. We are not done yet, lots of action coming. Things are going to get wild!

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